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Wrench Speaker Robert Hulse on Isambard Kingdom Brunel

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Robert Hulse, M.A., Director of London's Brunel Museum and will present a fascinating Victorian titan of industry and design, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and an interesting 20th-century American counterpart, Frank Lloyd Wright. His illustrated lecture is entitled, Isambard Kingdom Brunel: A Victorian Frank Lloyd Wright. Americans need little introduction to their favorite architect, but they may not know Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Englishman who changed the world. His first project, the oldest tunnel in the London subway, set forth the shape of our cities. His last project, the Great Eastern steamship, changed the pattern of world trade. Everything Brunel did, by land or by sea, he did with flare and showmanship worthy of Frank Lloyd Wright. Both worked beyond the parameters of established practice. Like Frank Lloyd Wright, Brunel was flamboyant as well as prolific. Like him, he was stylish, cutting a figure as a man of fashion, a collector and patron of the arts. In his lecture, Robert Hulse will introduce us to this extraordinary Englishman and discuss the remarkable similarities he shares with the 20th-century American architect, both of whom challenged the way we think about buildings and cities.

From L-R: Sophie Civetta of Evanston Township, Ann Urbanski of Brookfield Academy, Ernest Henton of Chicago High School for the Arts, Cameron Wise of New Trier, Carlo Zenner of Hinsdale High School and Danielle Chmielewski of Lincoln Park HS

Special Guests, David Bevington, one of the world's foremost Shakespearean scholars, has written or edited more than 30 volumes on Shakespeare and his contemporaries and Martin Whalley, Deputy Consul General to Great Britain